May 17, 2010 // 8:46 pm - The rumored new premium online subscription service, which will cost around £50 per year, is slated to be unveiled by Sony at E3 2010 according to VG247.com (linked above).

This news comes as no big surprise as Sony sent out a survey via IPSOS Online Research on the new service several months back to users.

To quote: "According to a highly-placed source, Sony will announce a large-scale monetizing scheme for PSN at the LA show, but we're assured nothing planned will impact the service's current free aspects.

A string of features will be revealed, apparently costing "less than £50 per year".

Sony will confirm plans to give all subscribers one free PSN game per month, from a choice of "two to four" every month.

"If you work it out, PSN games cost an average of £6-9 each, so over a year you're basically going to be breaking even," said our source.

A streaming music application similar to Spotify will be announced in Sony's press conference on June 15. It's thought that this can run in the background while playing games.

Rumours that cross-game voice chat is being saved as a paid feature are apparently not true, we were told."

It's a loophole because Sony aren't allowed to implement a feature which allows users to listen to music directly from their HDD while playing games. All games that do allow that feature have had it added by THAT GAMES DEVELOPERS and not by Sony.
Sony was hoping that more game dev's would add the feature into their games but it's just additional work for them so not many did.

If i'm not being clear: Sony aren't allowed to add a feature to the PS3 which allows you to listen to music from your HDD while you play a game.

Games that do allow you to listen to music from your HDD have it as an in-game option ie. you go to audio options within the game as opposed to bringing up the in-game xmb and directly playing your music. Having a "spotify like" feature which streams music while a game is being played is a loophole because the music isn't being accessed by your HDD drive.

but why are they not allowed to do this?? i don't understand why they wouldn't be?

What do you mean when you say that Spotify "is a nice loophole for sony to alow you to play your own music in games (since their not allowed to design something which has music playing directly from your HDD to be played in game)"? Certain games do support custom music, though most don't, of course. I do wish that music from my media servers could be used for custom game music, but I'm sure that's too much to ask as it would eat bandwidth that might otherwise be devoted to online play.

It's a loophole because Sony aren't allowed to implement a feature which allows users to listen to music directly from their HDD while playing games. All games that do allow that feature have had it added by THAT GAMES DEVELOPERS and not by Sony.
Sony was hoping that more game dev's would add the feature into their games but it's just additional work for them so not many did.

If i'm not being clear: Sony aren't allowed to add a feature to the PS3 which allows you to listen to music from your HDD while you play a game.

Games that do allow you to listen to music from your HDD have it as an in-game option ie. you go to audio options within the game as opposed to bringing up the in-game xmb and directly playing your music. Having a "spotify like" feature which streams music while a game is being played is a loophole because the music isn't being accessed by your HDD drive.

This is good because it does not affect another player who does not want to pay them or may not unlike the xbox that it in addition to an xbox gold does require every owner of a xbox trying to play online but I hope it will improve in time for son's offer even more choice and not a pale copy of Xbox Live

What do you mean when you say that Spotify "is a nice loophole for sony to alow you to play your own music in games (since their not allowed to design something which has music playing directly from your HDD to be played in game)"?

Certain games do support custom music, though most don't, of course. I do wish that music from my media servers could be used for custom game music, but I'm sure that's too much to ask as it would eat bandwidth that might otherwise be devoted to online play.

I agree with the general consensus that the free games may not be something which people will generally want and would like to add that 12 psn games on your HDD by the end of the year will have you looking for either a bigger HDD or choosing to delete some of them.

Also not everyone has the time to complete one game a month, and something like ff7 would definately take people longer than 30days to finish.

The idea of having a spotify style streaming app is good because i love spotify and it is a nice loophole for sony to alow you to play your own music in games (since their not allowed to design something which has music playing directly from your HDD to be played in game).

I agree that if Sony read their own forums for ideas then the need for research into this wouldn't have been necessary, but they never and so they have listened to the voices that they did ask.

If i remember correctly there was a sample of the questionnaire posted on here?? It was more of a price point kinda thing "do you think $30-$50 subscription is suitable if x, y, z features are included?"

That's their selling point... 1 Free game a month? Lets see, they will probably be ps 1 classics at that. If you look at it, it really isn't that solid of a deal. You basically cough up some money for Random games per month, and who is to say you will like the said random game?

That's plain old fashioned retardism on sonys part. They need in game voice chat for me to even contemplate forking over that amount, and it would e a long shot still. I say save your money and buy PS games YOU want to buy, dont play the "Sony Lottery"!

The free one PSN game seems interesting, but if the choices for user to choose from are not good or appeal to the user, then it is a waste.

Have to say, the survey was poorly conducted. Instead of getting some online research company to collect the data, they should have just send an official e-mail to most, if not all, PSN users and ask how they think, that way, everyone can get their opinions counted. Otherwise, like other users who are not able to contribute, my opinion/voice did not get counted.

Maybe if they just bothered to read their own forums, they could have saved a bucket load of money on surveys... but at least some good can come from this. with paid subscription, they can at last pay coders to try in give users the features they want!